F.T.C. Looks Into Ties Between Apple and Google Boards — SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties among the boards of two of technology's most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amounts to a violation of antitrust laws, according to several people briefed on the inquiry.

Amazon Plans Kindle for Textbooks — Amazon.comInc. on Wednesday plans to unveil a new version of its Kindle e-book reader with a larger screen and other features designed to appeal to periodical and academic textbook publishers, according to people familiar with the matter.

RIM plans next-gen Storm as it eyes untapped market — TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion is planning a next-generation version of its touchscreen BlackBerry Storm smartphone as part of a continuing push into the retail market, its co-CEO said on Monday.

Some thoughts about the PSD format — Here's what I think people want to know: Is Photoshop's PSD format a goofy, antiquated piece of crap, and by extension is Photoshop slow, clumsy, and/or outdated? — No. (Read on for details.) — The questions arise because various Web sites1 …

CrossLoop's Screen-Sharing App Comes To The Mac — After nearly five million downloads of its Windows PC client, CrossLoop brings its screen-sharing app and growing pro-am computer support community to the Mac (download here, for Intel Macs running OS X 10.4 or higher).

Exclusive: Windows 7 RC download goes live — The wait is over folks, Microsoft has published the download page for the Windows 7 RC. As we noted earlier, the download was scheduled to launch tomorrow and was to be available worldwide. Coming straight from the download page, here are Microsoft's notes for the release candidate:

Google Chrome on the Mac: what's the holdup? (UpdateD) — Want Google Chrome for Mac? You can have it - though note that there's plenty that's not actually, um, working just at the moment. It's odd how many months it's taking Google to do this port (and how the shine seems to have come off Chrome …

Why Tech Stocks Are on a Tear — The Dow Jones Industrial Average has bounced from its early March lows, but it remains down for the year. The past few weeks have shown the major market measures bickering about whether or not they should head higher or once again retreat.

A Manifesto — Newspapers and magazines won't vanish. But they must change. Here's how to save media. — Even a few years ago, Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, those 18th-century London gallants and the founders of the Spectator, would have recognized the forms and modes of business …

Do more with Google Latitude! — When we launched Google Latitude a couple of months ago, we were flooded with feature suggestions. One frequent request was to allow you to share your location with even more people and not just your Latitude friends. Today, we're launching two applications that do just that!

Is THIS the New Apple Netbook??? — Cult of Mac received this image tonight from a trusted contributor - and we just had to share. — We have more images that will take time to process and details about the provenance of this device we must parse, so bear with us until all can be revealed.

Consumer Reports Takes a Shine to Apple — Hitting for the cycle is a rare event in baseball, and rare as well in the pages of Consumer Reports. — So when you go three for three—as Apple has in the recent laptop computer-ratings issue—and score highly in other categories, it's worth at least a nod.

Mozilla ponders policy change after Firefox extension battle — The NoScript Firefox extension faced a major backlash last week when users discovered that it was surreptitiously disrupting the operation of AdBlock Plus. The developers behind the two extensions turned the browser into a battleground as their conflict escalated.

Live Updating the Stream — Since introducing the new home page, we've been working to make it easier for you to stay updated with your friends and connections. Your News Feed, in the center of your home page, offers you an updated stream of what's happening with them. Beginning today, that stream is going live.

Facebook Begins Heavily Promoting Mobile Services — Over the past day or so Facebook has begun heavily promoting their mobile services through ads on the site which all link to a new Facebook mobile landing page. They are trying to alert users to the robust set of mobile features …

States' Attorneys General to Meet with Craigslist — Attorneys general from Missouri, Connecticut and Illinois will meet with representatives of Craigslist tomorrow in New York City to discuss concerns that the site facilitates prostitution and other such services.

New Zealand Denies It's Scrapping Copyright Laws — Despite widespread reports last week that New Zealand was going to scrap its copyright laws, and start from scratch, Tom Rix writes in to point out that New Zealand officials are now denying this report and saying they're still working …